Once more a President’s Sona (State of the Nation Address) demonstrates to us how our socio-economic system needs changing not just the personalities running it. BBM used the “royal we” but we know that everything he told us was his personal responses to the country’s myriad problems. They happened because he gave the order and not because the country’s socio-economic system kicked into action. By the same token, none of what he promised will happen by virtue of the system but of whoever will be running it at the time.
That is the weakness of our system. Everything depends on who is running it. In this country, for instance, nothing happens without a positive nod from the President. On the flip side, a culture of dependency leaves the voiceless and powerless majority with no choice but to suffer the self-serving ways of the wielders of power.
In our system, power can smother law and decency with impunity. That makes it one big temptation for greed and corruption. Nothing in the system prevents the powerful from doing whatever they want. Thus, whoever we elect easily gets swallowed up by the gaping holes in the system and fails the Filipino people. It’s time we make common effort to change to a system that channels all its elements toward the common good and not toward an elite few.
So BBM talked about bringing the perpetrators of the flood control scam to justice, including his cousin Romualdez. But who knows when this will happen or whether it will happen at all. It’s been almost a year since the scandal broke yet no big fish, only small fry, have so far been snared by lady justice. He also said nothing about what the government will do to stop the corruption that is now endemic in government.
It was generous of him to stop charging consumers for systems loss and to raise the level of tax-exempt earnings. But how crazy is launching a rocket into space when so many Filipinos have no jobs, no houses, no access to medical care, cannot read or write? How crazy when so many fields are not irrigated and so many places are submerged in water at the next downpour, etc. etc. etc.?
We must also take note that the things he promised still have to be firmly executed. We have enough laws but implementation has always fallen short. Look at the constitutional ban on political dynasties. How long before Congress enacts a workable implementing law?
The system is supposed to work for the common good. As it stands, only those who run the system are making good. The system has to change not just the personalities running it. It’s like we are a school of sickly fish swimming in polluted waters. Until the water is changed, the sickness will just get worse.
BBM ended his speech with something ominously scary. He vowed to finish what he has begun because, and get a load of this, “I love the Filipino people.” But how can he finish what he has begun when he cannot run for another term in 2028? What exactly does he have up his expensive finely-tailored sleeve?
P.S. Can we not prescribe office attire for people attending the Sona? The fashion show was a glaring display of decadent wealth that most probably is ill-gotten. It has no place in a nation too many of whose people are in the jaws of a monster called poverty.